Today I thought I’d share a little bit about one of my main current projects, The Second Age of Sorcery. It has quite the meandering story, and still might take me places I’ve never been. So pull up a chair and get ready for story time!

Games have been an integral part of human cultures for thousands of years, if not tens of thousands of years. But it’s only been with the advent of a large and very lucrative digital game industry that large numbers of academics have begun to seriously study games in earnest. Now game departments are popping up in universities around the world.

At the request of one of my generous Patrons, today I’m going to discuss the type of academic work being done on games, and briefly mention a few universities with strong game programs. I’m not going to go into much detail, but I hope this gives a general overview that might send readers in the right direction if they’re thinking about getting into games more seriously.

Before I begin, you might be wondering what makes me qualified to talk about this. I was in a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz studying games for three and a half years, from 2008 to 2012. While I didn’t complete the program (I left to start Nothing Sacred Games), I was exposed to a lot of different facets of academic games, and met a lot of people from different schools. Now a number of the members of my cohort are at universities all over the world, starting or continuing games programs, so I’ve maintained ties to academia even though I’m very much a part of industry these days.

Today I’m going to discuss some very mathy game design theory. If that’s not your thing, it’s probably best to steer clear now.

Working on Shadow Throne and some other prototypes, I realized I was making use of something I’ll call relative numbers in my games. After giving it a little thought, I realized that these numbers show up in many games, and for good reason. Today I’ll spend some time explaining what relative numbers are, give a few examples of how they show up in games, and finish by discussing why you might want to include relative numbers in your game.

I find myself doing a lot of different things these days. Making games requires many different activities, from design, to playtesting, to balancing, to managing art and graphic design, to writing rules, to promotion, fund raising, and sales. And I’m not just making games–I’m also writing articles, running an online store, and always looking for new opportunities. Since I’m doing a lot of this myself, I have to structure my own time, and it’s not always easy to balance everything.

Today, I’m going to discuss some strategies I use to make sure I’m always making progress on important projects. There are two important concepts that help me structure my time: motivation and prioritization. I’ll cover each of them in detail below.

The Birds of a Feather Kickstarter is right around the corner (March 10th!), so I decided it’s time to share some stories from the game’s development. If you haven’t already checked out the free print and play, you might want to do that before diving into some of the details below.

Birds of a Feather is different from my previous games in many ways, most significantly because it’s very simple. It has a few core rules, but almost no special rules or exceptions. The rules fit on the front and back of a single sheet of paper with plenty of room for diagrams. This made the entire design process for the game very different from the other games.

When we last left off, over a year and a half ago, Corporate America had just begun hitting store shelves, and I was just beginning to get a grasp on its financial situation. Even though the Kickstarter was successful, I had to spend a pretty penny to finish and release the game.

Today I’m discussing something a little unusual. I thought it would be interesting to think about the basic actions humans can make and see how they’re used in games. Do games use all actions that people can take? Are there certain actions that stand on their own, preventing other types of actions? Are some actions just more fun than others?

I think my initial idea was a tad ambitious: listing every basic action a human can make is a little much for one blog post (or probably one lifetime, honestly). However, I still found the exercise to be both interesting and informative. I hope you agree!

I recently started a Patreon. It’s a bit of an experiment, but I’m hoping it will give friends and fans the chance to show their appreciation for this blog and help guide me by requesting article topics. Today’s article is the first of those requests.

Cardboard Edison is a husband and wife duo who have done great things for the game design community. They scour the internet in search of articles, podcasts, and forum threads about game design and publishing and share them with interested parties, helping content creators get exposure and making sure everyone has access to quality resources. It’s a win-win, and I highly recommend you follow them on twitter.

Cardboard Edison asked me a very interesting question: “You seem to have designed games in a pretty wide range of genres. Some designers and publishers prefer to work in a narrower range to build a brand. Could you talk about the pros and cons of the different approaches, both as a designer and a publisher?”

For those of you unfamiliar, the games I have released and am working on are all over the board. The first game I released, Corporate America, is a negotiation game set in the contemporary US with a satirical bite. Shadow Throne, scheduled for release in March of 2015, is a drafting, hand management game set in a dark medieval kingdom. And Birds of a Feather, which will be on Kickstarter in a few months, is a quick, simple card game about bird watching. And this isn’t even considering digital games!

The question really got me thinking about what I’m doing and whether I’m moving in the right direction or not, so it naturally makes for a great article! Join me as I weigh the pros and cons of having a diverse portfolio of games.

Emotion plays an interesting role in game design. On the one hand, people tend to do their best work when they are excited and passionate. On the other hand, strong feelings of pride and attachment can cloud your judgment, make it difficult to empathize with others, and ultimately lead to an inferior game.

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you have no trouble getting excited about game design. Few of us do. Instead, I’m going to focus on how excess emotion can cause you to make bad design decisions, and what you can do to avoid it.

Today I want to discuss something a little unusual for a game design blog: bird watching.

The long-billed curlew, one of the majestic birds from Birds of a Feather.

Before you immediately close the tab, let me explain why you might care. My next game, Birds of a Feather, was designed after I thought carefully about why I enjoy birding. I broke down the activity in terms of how people enjoy it, then thought about how to convert some of those joys into a card game. I found this method to be extremely valuable, and you might benefit from it if you want to make games inspired by other hobbies. And, because I was abstract in the way I thought about the activity, the resulting game could have been themed in any number of ways (though I ultimately stuck with the initial inspiration, bird watching).

So join me as I pick apart why anyone would ever enjoy birding, and then explain how I put some of those pieces back together to create an original card game.